Past the crunching twilight   Through to Plato’s dome   The shadows flicker   Oh cave, dark and binding   There is a light for us all   Half-light silhouettes   Stroboscopic scintillations         I have ten papers I haven’t read   And a pot about to boil   Which I can’t seem   To get up to cover         To melt the substance of arrangements   With an irrational touch   Damned motivation   Past lives with only   Molecular clarity   Disengage with time         I waited an hour for a bus   And when it came I waved it on   There wasn’t a difference to where it was going   How I waved was very important though   With a “vengeance is mine” non-chalance   Everyone on the bus knew   One woman threw a quarter at me, but it passed through me   And later fed .001 percent of the local disenfranchised population   And a cat   I felt good about that.   I’m not sure how much longer   Things will pass through . . .         Optical density refers to the speed of light in a medium.   The speed of light in a vacuum is 180,280 miles per second.   Refraction is the bending of a light beam as it passes through a surface   separating two different light transmitting materials.         Will they examine the dried blood and chalk marrow?   Will they clean the dirt from our mouths   to imagine what was said?   Will the best they can say be that we saw with Oedipal eyes?   They a generation born without sight,   Transfixed on osmosis.